User:Malick78/Kenneth James Saunders

Kenneth James Saunders (died 1937) was an orientalist and writer of numerous books on the Far East. He would go on to commit suicide in a style that the coroner at his inquest described as being reminiscent of that used in "India and the East".

Career
Saunders travelled extensively in India and the Far East. He had a nervous breakdown while in Japan. His mental health meant he had to turn down a professorship at Oxford University, which further upset him. Eventually, he decided to take his life.

Death
Saunders committed suicide aged fifty-four by burning himself in a hut on the South Downs, just outside Eastbourne where he lived the last few years of his life. His doctor, John Bodkin Adams (later tried for murder in 1957 and suspected by the police of being a serial killer), gave evidence at Saunders' inquest but is not suspected of having had any part in his death. The coroner Dr Edward Fitzwilliam Hoare described how Saunders had "upset the paraffin near his head and was rendered unconscious very quickly. I think it is possible - he was a student of Oriental affairs - that he might have had some idea of trying this death by burning which is not uncommon in India and the East." His sister Joyce described how he had "travelled a great deal in India, where he was employed by the Maharaja of Baroda, and in the Far East."

Books

 * Gotama Buddha: a Biography, 1923
 * Buddhism
 * Buddhism And Buddhists In Southern Asia
 * Epochs in Buddhist History, 1921
 * Gospel for Asia, 1928
 * The Story of Buddhism
 * Buddhism in the Modern World
 * The heart of Buddhism : being an anthology of Buddhist verse